NEW ORLEANS – The ACLU of Louisiana made the following statement regarding Burl Cain, who spent 21 years as warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, being appointed to lead Mississippi’s prison system.
Alanah Odoms Hebert, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, made the following statement:
“Burl Cain left a legacy of corruption, cruelty, and callous disregard for the human lives in his custody. From denying people access to medical care to holding three innocent men in solitary confinement for decades, the brutal conditions he oversaw at Angola were an affront to justice and human dignity that had a devastating impact on the facility’s overwhelmingly Black population. While professing to believe in redemption and decarceration, his record makes a mockery of those claims. It is shocking that just five years years after resigning in disgrace, Burl Cain has been given authority over Mississippi’s troubled statewide corrections system and 29,000 human souls.”
